The student climbing wall safety seminar which the Castle ran at the end of September was a good success, attracting student leaders from University College London and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, giving us a chance to pass on effective teaching techniques to those who will be supervising and teaching new climbers in the centre. It also provided the students with a perfect opportunity to speak to the Castle Management and raise any issues they have regarding the centre.

The Castle sent 9 members of the Comp Squad to the national lead climbing championships, this year held in Sheffield on Saturday the 5th of October. Although this was the first national final for many of the 9 climbers, we still qualified 4 for the final with Yasmin Roberts missing out on her final by the narrowest of margins. Of special note, in the highly competitive Youth B male category, Castle Squad members (Jim Pope, Cameron McLoughlin and Stan Harris) made up half the final.

Castle setter and British Team member, Leah Crane, has a new video about one of her favourite bouldering areas in the UK: St Bees Head in West Cumbria. This is the first of a a new video series featuring Marmot sponsored athletes. The series, "Hand Picked" features the climbers' favourite places to climb and is part of the publicity leading up to the Kendal Mountain Festival held in November. Leah was at The Castle in October for the Loft Launch event.

The GB junior bouldering team has ended the season on an all-time high, with team captain Nathan Phillips winning gold at the European Youth Cup (EYC) in Laval, France on Saturday 12 October.

In July, the 19-year-old from Holmfirth, now ranked second in the world, became the first-ever junior Brit to get a podium place in a European youth bouldering event, coming third place in L’Argentiere.

Our Castle Garden bonfire this year is on Sunday, November 3rd. Join us in the garden from 2pm to help tidy the garden and build the bonfire and wickerman. We will light up the bonfire around 4pm. There will be cob fired pizzas on sale in the roundhouse.

Hope to see you there!

The Castle Garden Team

P.S. This event is weather dependant. If it's looking really bad, we may need to postpone the event. Please check the website the day before just to be sure.

The Castle is looking for a chef who is passionate about sustainable vegetarian and vegan food and will be excited about working with our Café Manager and our garden team to produce great value, healthy food for hungry climbers! The position may be full time or part time shared with another chef depending on your availability and experience.

In 2009, when we embarked on our mission to reduce our environmental impact, the first thing we did was take stock and try to measure what our impact actually was. We used 2008 as our 'base year' from which we will measure our progress. Putting together the data for the report was a mammoth task involving digging up old invoices, researching methodologies, choosing conversion factors and trying to remember what the heck we'd done the previous year. That first report highlighted the key areas of impact and we developed our Sustainability Policy and Goals.

After quitting my job in investment banking in ’06, I studied for Herbal Medicine for four years at the University of East London. Since qualifying as a herbalist with a BSc (Hons) in 2011, I’ve built up a large dispensary, consisting mainly of tinctures and dried herbs, which I source wherever possible from organic-certified suppliers.